The world of advertising is transforming. In a society saturated by information, it’s harder than ever to grab the attention of potential customers. So, just how do you get people to take notice of your business? Try reaching them through social media. Facebook has nearly 1.8 billion monthly active users, so advertising on its platform could be the answer. Learn more about how Facebook advertising works and find out how Search Engine Pros can help you harness its power to boost your business.
Why use Facebook advertising?
Here are the key reasons why Facebook advertising wins over traditional ad formats like print, billboard, radio, TV and even Google Adsense:
- Facebook ads are far cheaper in terms of cost to reach 1,000 people. For example, Buffer app found that spending just $5 per day on Facebook adverts bought them 9 likes, 1 click to their homepage and 787 new views. Moz claims that spending $1 per day on Facebook gets your brand in front of 4,000 people.
- Facebook ads run on pay-per-click or pay-per-day impressions, similar to Adsense. That means that you’re in control of your budget and can set daily caps or limits on the total campaign.
- Facebook ads are highly visible because they’re placed directly in users’ news streams.
- You can target specific audiences with Facebook ads based on a number of factors including interests, age, behaviour, connections, languages, gender, location, religion, politics, marital status and occupation.
- Facebook allows you to find existing customers using contact lists, web traffic from your site or activity in your app. This allows you to remarket to an audience who has already visited your site and has some interest in your business.
- Once you have a converting audience you can use the Lookalike Audience feature to reach new people who have similar profiles.
- You can test and track the success of your advertising campaigns in real time with Facebook Analytics and adjust them using the Adverts Manager tool.
Exactly how does Facebook advertising work?
Facebook has made over $6.4 billion in advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2016 alone. The social network has become a key leader in the ad field by creating the most sophisticated consumer profiling ever. Here’s how it works:
- When you’re logged into Facebook, it tracks everything you do on the internet. This allows it to build a profile of your lifestyle including what brands you like, your hobbies and interests, favorite foods, music, films and so much more.
- Facebook knows where you live and uses your electronic device and location settings to figure out key information about you.
- The company also uses consumer data that has been sourced by credit companies and research firms like Experian to build a fuller idea of your lifestyle habits.
This might sound pretty scary for consumers, but it’s a dream for advertisers who can use this information to target very specific audiences. Plus, if they wish, Facebook users can adjust their privacy settings using the Ad Preference Tool to avoid being tracked.
What makes Facebook advertising even better is that it has 10 different ad methods which cater to different business aims:
- Boost your posts to a wider audience.
- Promote your page to get more likes.
- Send people to your website.
- Increase conversions on your website.
- Get people to install your app.
- Increase engagement in your app.
- Reach people who live near your business.
- Get people to attend an event.
- Get people to claim an offer, such as a discount on next purchase or enter a sweepstake.
- Generate video views.
How can we help you with Facebook advertising?
Whether you want to drive sales or increase brand awareness, with a little bit of time, money and testing, Facebook ads can provide a real boost for your business. If you need assistance setting things up, Search Engine Pros can help in the following ways:
- We can work with you to assess your advertising needs.
- Set up your Facebook advertising account
- Test various adverts and analyze what works best.
- Set up a regular advertising budget and schedule your Facebook ads.
Contact us to get started with your Facebook advertising campaign.
Taylor, thank you for summarizing the benefits on Facebook advertising. I do not doubt that Facebook has a full profile of each user and makes it extremely easy to target a select audience. However, the Moz claim that $1 a day will get your ad 4,000 views seems a bit far fetched. This number seems highly relative to your audience criteria and to your business.
That fact that ads can specifically target users that have already visited your business page is crucial. The real key is finding a way to remarket to past clients. A return client is more valuable than a first time client in my opinion.
Turning each Facebook click into a purchase is the next step in the process.
Thanks.
Hey Taylor,
Facebook advertising is honestly the best way to get your business some type of traffic and new customers. So many people use facebook daily. Once you figure out your audience, it’s not much harder to grow your business online footprint. Great and insightful post.
I think Facebook aims at an older audience and that if one is targeting younger generations for their business I would suggest advertising on Instagram instead. I do think social media advertising is very smart, especially since people have switched to streaming services, and especially ones without advertisements so TV is not as lucrative for businesses as it was. I think social media is the best place to advertise, actually. I would love to see the costs of advertisements on different social media platforms and how they compare. For example, Facebook compared to Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. Which is the cheapest? I think that could help inform my decision before I advertise, though after reading this I would definitely consider Facebook advertising or at least some sort of social media advertisement.
I barely used Facebook for advertisements because I don’t fully understand the whole concept. So, I just send my page through my friend list and hope for the best. After reading this post I now have a better understanding of how Facebook advertising works and I know how to make it work for my candle business.
On Facebook I have had some luck in them getting the amount of views I have asked for, but I cant quite reach the amount of clicks that I would like. I am not getting too much interaction with the website the ad leads too. If anything people are just going to the main page and bouncing out when I look at the analytics. Im going to look at some tools you provide for improving my web presence and see what I can do to keep people on my page after they click on the ad because right now the money I am spending is not giving me results. Thanks for all you do.
I would into setting up a lookalike audience. Lookalike audience is a term that is used to collectively describe a group of prospective customers who are likely to be interested in the same things as your current customers. This type of audience can be created by using custom features that are available on your Facebook pixel. The creation process offers you a wide range of options such as picking the ideal size for your campaign that will closely match the source audience. You can create up to 500 Lookalike Audiences from a single source audience. Look a like audiences are very powerful and I’m surprised at how many people still don’t know they exist.